Supported by the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of their research vessels, the Okeanos Explorer focuses its efforts on deep see exploration for the purpose of discovery and the advancement of knowledge. Its job is literally to go out in to the deep abyss and look for anything and everything that might be new to science.

The ship employs something known as telepresence, a system by which most the research scientists and staff stay onshore during the research trips and not on the vessel itself. Using real-time broadband satellite communications the images collected from the ships ROV’s are immediately transmitted to shore live.

The programme has been running since 2008, and over that time they have collected some fascinating videos of creatures that you would scarcely believe originated from this planet. The video below is a short montage of some of the footage captured and was produced by Quartz media. You can check out more of the vessels videos at their youtube channel. Be warned though, I have lost many a working hour watching the videos on their site, 8 years of research is lot to get through!